


Hope & Joy

by Azar443



Series: Funkspiel's Birthday [2]
Category: Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them (Movies)
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-09-05
Updated: 2017-09-05
Packaged: 2018-12-24 06:42:30
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,236
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12007221
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Azar443/pseuds/Azar443
Summary: There's a shop across the street from the Woolworth building, where there’s a woman claiming to weave shrouds made out of the memories of loved ones. When he’s in bed that night, he reaches out for the shroud and wraps it around him tentatively, the warmth of the shroud seeps into his body and tired limbs and weary muscles.





	Hope & Joy

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Funkspiel](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Funkspiel/gifts).



It’s cold.

The windows are cold to the touch, as are the blankets that should warm and comfort. His hands are cold, cold and empty and grasping at thing air. His heart is cold, buried beneath the ground with the body of a man he loved and lost. The air he breaths in is cold, and so is the water filling the tub that he sinks his head beneath. His soul is cold, but when he surrenders to the darkness, he thinks he can find that little flickering smile that warms his heart, just a little. It’s autumn and everything is dying. His love, his heart, his  _home_  is dead as well.

It’s exactly 4 days and 16 hours since the funeral, since earth covered cold limbs and unseeing eyes. He hasn’t eaten for the past 3 days, and it is only being force fed by his concerned friends that he eats. It’s a mechanical motion, he finds, somewhat fascinatedly, how the mouth opens and closes, and how the teeth chew methodically until food has turned to mush, how the throat swallows. Then the process is repeated again until no more food can be taken in. He doesn’t feel the food; he’s not felt anything other than the cold fingers of grief creeping up his torso. He thanks his friends woodenly, a customary politeness that is as empty as the look in his eyes. His friends worry,  _oh_  how they worry, but grief isn’t a shallow pool from which you can easily be pulled out of. It’s a deep, ever spiralling whirlpool that feels like molasses around your feet and a tight band around your heart that you just can’t get rid of.

He spends his days in ennui, doing nothing and wanting nothing. Well, that’s not quite true he supposes. He  _does_  want something, but that something is buried six feet under and sleeping with the dirt and worms and he laughs. He laughs and laughs and laughs because life is a  _stupid_  thing that baits you with hope and love and takes it away from you  _just_  when you think you’ve found your forever. The cup of tea carelessly slips to the floor and shatters, and he laughs even more, even as the hot liquid seeps into his socks and scalds his skin because he feels  _nothing_.

* * *

One autumn day (he doesn’t know which. Time is only the number of days and hours he’s been without the man he loves), when he’s told of a little shop that’s popped up just across the street from the Woolworth building. He’s told that it doesn’t sell anything you’d use in everyday life, but that there’s a woman claiming to weave shrouds made out of the memories of loved ones. He’s not curious; why should he be, when there’s no one to excitedly probe him to find out what the shop sells? He goes anyway, because what else has he to do but exist with the gaping hole loss has unceremoniously left him with?

The shop is small and the lighting is dim, and the shelves are bare of any product to be sold. There’s a single counter in the entire shop, and a woman who looks neither young nor old appears when the little bell above the door rings as he enters. He sits awkwardly before her, and neither speak until the woman gently breaks the silence,  _who is it you’ve lost_? There’s a broken smile on the face of a broken man, and his answer is a whisper so soft it stirs not cobwebs nor dust,  _my love. My heart._  There’s a weight on his hand, and he blinks, because it’s  _warm_  and he’s very nearly forgotten what warm  _is_. She tells him that payment is in Hope and Joy, and a chortling, choked laughter escapes his tight chest because  _what Hope and Joy do I have left but my memories_? She shakes her head and merely asks that he returns with payment only when he’s ready, and her request is so ludicrous because how can he ever hope to be happy again?

Nevertheless, he agrees, and asks for the finest of shrouds to be made of his love, and he sits for an hour as she plucks strands of life and love and loss and joy. Weaving them with the gentlest of hands, she coaxes the strands into the softest of cloth, shimmery and pearlescent and not quite there, and she hums a wordless song that hold the strands in place. When she adds the glistening dusts of Hope and Joy, he asks, suddenly, child-like, if he might ever be happy again. She points to his heart, and not unkindly, tells him that happiness has never left. It’s just shielded by grief and sorrow, but humans have been, and always will be nothing if resilient. It’s why Hope never left. He doesn’t understand her words, and thinks her mad and it shows, but she only smiles and continues weaving. He wonders if he’ll ever understand what she’s said, but a year later, when he brings a little boy named Credence to visit Newt’s grave who calls Newt “dada”, the headstone still grasps tight at his heart, but the grief subsides and he thinks he can feel Newt by his shoulder, laughing at their beautiful son, and he thinks the weaver was right. Joy never left.

He returns home that night, shroud in hand and head full of thoughts and reminiscence. He’s in bed when he reaches out for the shroud and wraps it around him tentatively, the warmth of the shroud seeps into his body and tired limbs and weary muscles, and for the first time since Newt Scamander was laid to rest, Percival Graves cries. The tears are a flowing torrent that leaves his throat and insides raw, and the tight band of hurt around his heart loosens, just enough so he can  _breathe_. The night is spent remembering, and he can feel Newt’s warm breath on his neck and there’s a phantom weight on his back and arms around his torso and Percival imagines the red head is there, that they’re both curled up in bed after making love and in the darkness, he can almost make out Newt’s boyish grin and the twinkling of green eyes in the dark. He falls asleep with the shroud around him, a flimsy replacement for Newt’s embrace, and he thinks he dreams of soft lips and calloused hands on his hair, his face, his body and whispering last words of love and apology. Tears leave trails on his cheeks when he wakes up the next day, but the shroud is warm and so is he.

* * *

Percival returns with payment the same month Newt died, one year after he orders the shroud from the woman. The shop is closed, and there’s no sign of it ever being there. No one can seem to recall there ever being a shop there when he asks around, but as he looks into the dark interior of the empty room through grimy windows, there’s a note that’s sticking out from the frame. It’s addressed to him, and there are only two words scrawled on the note. He stares for a bit, then makes his way home. The note flies away with the wind, and when someone picks it up and reads it, they’re confused to read the words “payment accepted”.


End file.
